Making Sales with the Amazon Affiliate Program

Hi EmpressFelicity! I hope you got a few ideas for things you can try with your hubs. It is pretty amazing when you get your first few sales. Once you have made a few you will most likely feel really confident about writing product hubs and know that it's not just a fluke. All the best to you my friend and thanks for reading :D

Hi trose, thanks for the read and great question! I do use the keyword tool but mostly so that I have an idea how people are most likely to find my page. The thing about the keyword tool is that it tells you what was not what will be. With my avatar hub I didn't think to much about the keyword tool as it is not likely to reflect the spike in traffic to come when the movie is released (which it is now). If you gut tells you that something should sell, I say listen to it! Trends come and go, and sometimes come back again! (look at bellbottoms, those keep coming back haha!). I tend to worry about keywords if I am writing an information based hub (a how to type hub) and the habit does happen with product hubs but if my gut says go for it and the keyword tool says its not popular I go with my gut. You may have to be more patient when writing to a trend you predict to happen and a hub usually needs time to mature before you have a good idea of what its traffic will be anyway. Try writing for summer buying before spring, that way its there and ready to go when people start looking for summer fun ideas online :) You want your christmas hubs up before the shops start displaying christmas stuff. I just try to keep myself thinking about future trends not current or past trends (unless I really want to cause it will be fun).

Hi lorlie6! I hope to have helped out out. I think the biggest thing to try is being patient (don't check your account daily to start with) and write about all the stuff you would love to buy yourself. If you can't help yourself and go to check your amazon affiliate page try not to worry about ordered items, just the rate of traffic you are getting through the door. If you can get a few people a day you are already on your way to making a sale. Once you get one you may well get hooked! All the best hun :D

CMHypno - A Maori phrase book, thats neat! I have thought of moving to NZ. I am glad to have given you a few ideas to try. Keep publishing quality hubs on great products and you should see those sales increase in the months to come!

WriteAngled - Thanks for the read! Glad I could help :)

Juneaukid - Writing about stuff you know is a great way to go! You should be able to give some great advice on what it can do to improve life. I recently bought some freeloaders and think they are pretty amazing, I may do a video showing off the versatility that could be added to a hub about freeloaders. Before we bought our freeloaders we did quite a lot of research and a hub might have come in handy, no reason not to share what we know. I am glad to have inspired you to give it a try, I hope you have some fun writing it (that is the best strategy really).

Jen's Solitude - Thanks for reading. I enjoy sharing what I know and have learnt in my time here on HP. I hope you have had a few ideas for future hubs because of this hub.

Micky Dee - Amazon is really loosing out by not offering affiliates in certain states for tax reasons, it kinda sucks for that! I have seen a few star affiliates dropped due to their location, not good for amazon and very good for their competitors. I would love to see another affiliate supported on HP for people such as yourself :(

poetlorraine - I am glad you left your comment. I went and had a look at 2 of your hubs that caught my eye from your profile. I had a few ideas that you might use to better monitize these hubs as right now they are only linked to google ad sense and probably not getting huge value clicks. If they get good traffic the could be your source for inspiration.

The first one is http://hubpages.com/hub/My-Crafty-Side. This one caught my eye because I too have a natural talent for craft work. I thought it would suit me nicely and I might learn a new craft art. I got something I didn't expect from reading it. You talk about how once you bought this sissix machine you were able to use it in your career and it was more of an investment then simply a bit of fun. A how to hub on turning your hobby into a main part of your career hub would likely help loads of people like us. On top of that I expected to see amazon ads for this machine or the supply packages you use to create your own cards. You might want to think about showing off some cool craft supplies that could get a person started doing what has been so beneficial to you. You might be able to take the ideas in this one hub and turn it into a series all about making your own cards and how to use that skill to pay the bills. You might want to use keywords like make your own cards or sissix in google keyword tool to find a few related keywords (don't worry to much about the traffic numbers for now).

The second hub was http://hubpages.com/hub/Inspired-By-Scripture. This one reminded me of a poem that I saw in the homes of friends and family who were particularly religious and spiritual. The poem was footprints and was usually framed or on a placard hanging on a wall taking pride of place in the room. I saw and admired that poem so often as a kid I used to have it memorized. I would not suggest putting that one up on this hub cause it is well known but I got to thinking about if there are other poems like this that could take that prize of place. I would not place any old thing on a hub like this but if you can find something you think your readers would think was a real special item, something that could inspire them spiritually every day the way your poems did they might really appreciate the tip. I would suggest you just have a browse of what amazon offers and see if anything stands out as being truly special and inspiring, you might be surprised at what is out there!

I may send you an email when I get the chance to to talk to you more about how to make amazon work for you. I am back at the day job now so time is short but its only 5 weeks till the end of term holiday so you'll see more hubs soon!

wrenfrost56 - Thanks for reading and leaving a comment. It's nice to think I might have given you a valuable tip to two. I have enjoyed your hubs and posts for a while now :)

laswi - Glad to share! Thanks for the comment.

hypnodude - Keep me posted! I absolutely WANT to know if my advice made the difference to you amazon selling for that hub! You could make a buck or two if you can get a sale with fitness stuff! A hub like that only needs one or two buys to be worth it, bigger purchases are nice :) You never know tho, you might get some totally unexpected sale! I got one for hair loss cover up makeup and had no idea that even existed (I educated myself fast tho so I could write a hub!)

DanPowers - Wow, you have been an amazon affiliate for awhile! I see you have only been a part of the HP family for 3 weeks, you do seem to be off to a great start! I had a look at your hub http://hubpages.com/living/Who-needs-a-waterproof-... to get a flavor for your product hubs. I had an idea and you may or may not agree with it so I will share here and you can let me know if you would agree. I had a look at the ads on this hub and they are good for cheaper waterproof safes and more expensive ones too but I didn't see alternatives for a reader who thinks its a bit more then they need. You don't want to get way off topic with your ads but you might think about say a Master Lock cash box or something that a person looking at safes might prefer. If you take me, my situation is one where I am not near the sea or rivers and would be less likely to do more then read, if I saw an option that was a lesser type of item like a cash box I might decide to buy that instead thinking I don't need all that protection. By offering an alternative to the high security of a waterproof safe for a city dweller such as myself you might get people through the amazon 'door'.

TnFlash - Thanks for the Read! That cookie is a pain in the booty. I expect we get more sales then we get credit for due to the cookie but what can ya do? I still find amazon more profitable then google ad sense! I get clicks with it but they just don't earn as much as the smallest sale I have made (the commissions I mean). I hope one or two of my tips make the difference to your sales and commissions :)

charanjeet kaur - Thanks for the compliment! I really wanted to make this stuff easy to understand. I know the internet jargon can be daunting and even when you understand it you maybe don't really understand it all the time. I had hoped to write something that made understanding the jargon irrelevant and just made the process of actually selling something easy to understand and 'see' so that you guys do this stuff and have the rush of having made more sales then can be called a fluke. So far I am tickled pink that I seem to have achieved what I set out to do here :)

lajoiedevivre - I am self taught. Through reading and studying what others do that works and trying different methods myself I have found it a steep but very fun and rewarding learning curve. I have played around with keywords and do not use that method for placing items as the results brought in are not always very relevant or appropriate to the text of an article. It's more work going through page after page of products on amazon BUT you can get ideas for future articles and can offer a better range of products on your articles. It is mind boggling how much there is on offer with amazon and it can be fun finding great gems to display in an article. Using keywords seems to me a somewhat lazy approach and while it saves you checking articles for items no longer valid in amazon that need replacing you don't usually get a good match for ads to your article. I would prefer to do the work myself and have the best range of products to fit the text. If google was a bit easier to pick and choose in regards to what ad's are placed in a particular article I would probably do a lot better with them! :D

Don - I love that product hubs can bring clicks with google so you don't have to worry about not taking advantage of both affiliate programs. I find that indicating in the title (not necessarily the url) that it was a buying guide type article means that the traffic I get converts more easily. As time goes on the traffic picks up faster on new hubs then when I started, and a few of the first ones are starting to draw traffic much more regularly now too. Amazon does have best sellers under different categories you can look through for ideas. I have often found someone just saying they want to buy something gives me the idea to write about what they said they wanted to buy. All the best!

Keith Tax - Congrats on the sales you must be making to have come to expect 1 in 50 to convert! Sounds like you are making a brilliant start and off to build a small empire of affiliate sales :D

All the best mate!

Jayne, I know of a few folks who abandoned amazon with only a few ads on a few hubs who after totally forgetting about it made their first sale. The efforts you have already made may not have been a waste, could just be that those items will take longer to turn into sales. Also worth remembering that with amazon they have a pretty short cookie life span so you could make a sale and not get credit because it took to long for the person to buy. It is frustrating and I wish amazon would change this but for now it is what it is. The fact that HP uses amazon capsules and its so easy here is why I am willing to keep pushing for those sales that will happen within the cookie life span. The other reason for me is that ebay is much harder to get approval from as you need to have your own successful web site.

Yay! Wooo Hoo, Break out the bubbly! Congrats Jayne! Must feel pretty darned good :D That is just so cool, I am sitting here grinning like a mad person! I am that happy for you :D

Glad that I as able to help, made my day really :D

ajysnwb - Affiliates do have a lot of work with these programs, and I don't think that it helps them out that much at the end of the day. Amazon has such a short life span with its cookies that you gotta get folks making impulse purchases before the cookie runs out and eBay, well I hear it is easier to earn once you are approved. Getting approved takes lots of work tho. If you are serious about getting an ebay affiliate you need your to own your own website with quite a lot of quality content that brings traffic. I kinda think they are cutting off their noses to spite their faces as the saying goes. I hope that they will at some point relax and realize that they are loosing affiliates and the promotion that affiliates do for them. Amazon is set to loose loads of affiliates in the States as tax laws change and they drop some top affiliates. I kind of hope that for those of us not the in the States will find them willing to give us a longer cookie life span to keep us working for them as they have lost so many State based affiliates. I have a plan for trying to host my own blog site and building it up with enough content to try for eBay but with their strict rules I wont even try until then.

ajysnwb - there are so many different ways to create income online, if amazon and ebay are not right for you there probably is something that is just right. I recently set up an online store where creating products is easy and the shop itself is free, I am still learning how to tweak it to make it stricking for visitors and of course promoting it. If you are interested in finding out more I have written a walk through hub for setting up an online store with Zazzle. Might be worth your having a look at it :)

konrel - Glad you found this hub informatie and helpful. As for adding amazon adds, when you are in edit mode for a hub you need to add an amazon 'capsule' these are like text capsules or photo capsules. You usually can see the various capsules available in hubs along the top of your page unless you are at the top and can see the stationary selection of capsules. You just click the one you want and its added at the bottom of the page, scroll down and click up until you have it where you want it (you can also move it to the right of text capsules to create a more appealing effect). In the capsules you can either place individual products from amazon.com or you can use keywords to find products to place (there is much less control with this one so you need to check what products are pulled in with your keywords). The other thing to think about is if you have your affiliate stuff set up, if not HP gets all sales! If you have not signed up and placed your affiliate ID in HP yet you will want to go to your account - affiliate settings and follow the walk through steps to apply and put in place your affiliate ID so you get credit for any sales. I hope this has helped and if you need any further clarification please feel free to send me an email and I will get back to you as soon as I am able :)

konrel - when you are editing a hub and are at the top of the page to the right you should see a control panel where you can add 'capsules' for the different elements you want to include in your hub (from amazon ad's to video etc.) When you click the amazon capsule it adds it at the bottom of the page, you will need to scroll all the way down to move it up to where you want it. You can add as many amazon capsules as you like, I will often have one per text capsule. Adding new text capsules is the same as amazon capsules, in the same control panel. When you are working on your hub and have scrolled down the page the control panel becomes a floating one across the top of the page and will float in that position as you scroll through your hub. To add a particular item to advertise you might want that item open in a second window so that you can copy and paste the URL straight over into the open amazon capsule. To open the amazon capsule just hit the 'edit' button on the capsule and you can choose to select individual items or items by keyword, when you choose individual items you are given URL or ISBIN boxes, the url should work just fine. You can also choose just how many items to display when in the capsule (editing it).

Rismayanti - The items need to be shipped to show your earnings for those items, right now they are just ordered and it can take a few days for the order to be confirmed and shipped out. I had a set of ordered items take like two weeks to be shipped once! There are a few items with amazon where affiliates do not make any commission for sales, mostly digital stuff. Congrats on getting 6 ordered items by the way! Thats a brilliant start!

Winsome - I see no reason why you cannot place items on your hubs that you are selling with amazon. I think that is a brilliant idea as well! I know people do just that with ebay in order to get traffic and boost sales. Doing the same with amazon sounds like a great idea, win win you know. I have not looked at selling items myself with amazon (no stock to sell) so am not an authority as to what promotion you are encouraged to do with them but I would imagine they welcome it. I hope you do well and wish you all the best!

Thanks for leaving a comment J Sunhawk - Patience and persistence are important in lots of areas of life I find so increasing my patience and strength for persistence always a most valuable exercise. Glad you liked that line in particular :D

ebookshack - If you can write enough good content for a hub that is a great way to go. What you want to do is link those hubs together. If one of them hits it big traffic wise the visitors may well be interested in one of the 'satellite' hubs. This gives you the chance for more readers who might then click an ad or buy something. It is a great strategy for dominating a niche here on HP. If your product is very specific you can always show any accessories to that type of item (maybe they already have one and need info, an accessory might catch their eye).

Golfgal - I just went and had a look at your hubs. You are off to a brilliant start! The one to catch my eye was https://pethelpful.com/dogs/What-your-dog-cannot-e...

The information was great and should do well with search engines over time, exactly the sort of thing a pet owner would want to find. My only suggestion would be to break the text into separate 'capsules' as you have a lot of text before anything that might make you money. Good layout of text means you have better advertising placement on the page that gives a better chance for earning, without looking tacky (thats whats so cool here, its hard to make a tacky page!). There are a few great hubs on page layout that you might want to check out, just search for page layout in the HP search box and sample a few to get an idea how you can maximize your hard work. :)

hinazille - The problem you describe could be down to a site glitch. It has happened in the past that many hubbers have had their amazon ads disappear because it can't find the products. If you are still having this problem try another item to see if it has the same problem, if it does HP has a glitch. You can notify staff and try again in a few hours or a day. It is possible that an item wont pull through because it is discontinued (doesn't sell anymore through amazon) but that is pretty rare. I bet it's a amazon capsule glitch.